


What She Beheld

by hariboo



Series: If You Want To Live [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, F/M, Robots Sucks, Terminators
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-12
Updated: 2014-03-12
Packaged: 2018-01-15 11:51:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1303882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hariboo/pseuds/hariboo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things change. </p><p>Plans change. </p><p>Experiments can yield new and strange results.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What She Beheld

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fuzzy_paint](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuzzy_paint/gifts).



> So here’s a sequel to that Terminator AU, kinda. I'm sorry this is so unbeta'd.
> 
> Oh, this not a WIP series. I repeat, this is not WIP series. Things might get added, but probably not. 
> 
> The title is a bastardisation of at T: TSCC episode "What He Beheld". I'm very creative.

They almost don't make it out. 

Metal rains down and Jane isn’t sure how she makes it out of the bunker. She thinks she must have hit her head at some point, because everything from the second the alarm sounded and Thor burst a flyer on his tail blurs. They had been testing the machine, it had been _connecting_ and then Thor appeared, and the flyer right behind him. There was only once choice clear in Jane’s head at the time. It was too early, however, and it wasn’t meant to be him, but it was the only thing she could think of to save him. To save them all. She remembers her lips against his, her hands pushing him, his eyes wide as her lightning swallowed him up. She’s sure that Tony and Bruce yelled, but she doesn’t remember that. Only Thor’s blue eyes and that she saved him. The knowledge that he could save them. It hadn’t been the plan. It had only meant to be a test run, but then--

Things change. 

Plans change. 

Experiments can yield new and strange results.

She doesn’t remember how she gets out. She thought she was going to die in that room but then--

Sif is yelling at her. That is what she remembers next. Sif shaking her, pulling her up -- “Come on, Jane! We have to move!” -- and Sif dragging her out of the bunker. Her ears had been ringing. She had touched them and then saw blood on her finger tips. 

Every blurred into dust and fire before--

“Jane! Jane!”

She blinks up. Sif is staring at her. Sif is cupping her cheeks. 

“Sif.”

“Jane,” Sif breathes, worry and relief warring in her voice. “Where’s Thor?”

Thor. Jane stares at her fingers. Their shaking, she’s shaking. The fingers that pushed Thor into a lightning storm. She told him she loved him and pushed him away. If the plan didn’t work-- if the machine didn’t work she had killed... She--

Jane swallows. “I sent him away.”

“Jane?” Sif eyes her, curious. Jane reads the surprise on her face easily. When they first met they hadn’t been close, but over the years they had all become family. Sif knows Jane would never send Thor away. 

“I sent him to save us.”

Sif doesn’t know about the plan. Few in the Resistance do. It makes sense she’s confused. That she’s looking at Jane like Jane’s finally lost her mind in her work. It was just so dangerous. It might not work. If it didn’t work then Thor is-- Jane can’t think this way. She closes her eyes and breathes in. Her lungs hurt. She might have inhaled too much smoke. That's when she realises she doesn’t knows where Darcy, Tony or Bruce are. They were in the bunker with her. Darcy has asthma, smoke clogs up her lungs, it’s very dangerous for her. They were---

Jane opens her eyes. Sif is still staring at her. She’s also bleeding. There is a slash from her brow all the way down to her cheek. Her hands are holding a thick leather coat around Jane and she’s rubbing Jane’s arms. 

Oh. She’s been in shock. That makes sense. Around her the sounds of the world begin filling in. 

“I sent him to save us all,” Jane repeats. Sif still doesn’t know what she means, but she must read something in Jane’s eyes that settles her. Jane promises herself to tell her soon enough. She first needs to find out what happened, where Darcy, Tony and Bruce are. Did they make it? Who else made it? Where are they?

Sif sighs, leaning back. Her hands slow on Jane’s arms and start falling away. Jane reaches and grabs hold of one of Sif’s hand, holding it tight. Sif’s eyes flutter but she doesn’t pull away. They’ve never been the most tactile with each other, but Sif is the only thing right now Jane is sure of. She holds on to Jane’s hand too. 

Now that the shock is wearing off, Jane picks up the details of everything around her much faster. They’re in the tunnels. The old ones. The ones Clint and Nat had been mapping out in case they ever needed to run. She can see people rushing around her. She wonders if they should be rushing too, but if Sif, Sif, who’s stronger than steel and braver than most isn’t Jane guesses it’s okay. Sif wouldn’t stop unless they were safe. 

Jane licks her lips. They feel dry and cracked and she can’t taste Thor on them anymore. But she can still feel the pressure of his mouth against hers, his teeth against her bottom lip, as she pressed words against his mouth. He has to have made it. He has to make. He can’t be dead. Jane can’t think that.

She turns to Sif. Her profile is as sharp as ever, the dirt on her cheek too close to the cut by her eye. Jane reaches up and with the sleeve of her shirt wipes at it. Sif starts and stares at her. Jane licks her thumb and mom cleans the dirt. It makes Sif’s lip quirk.

“I’m better now. Sorry that you got stuck babysitting me.” Because she’s realising that’s what it was. Jane is good under pressure, she’s even good in fights, makes things that destroys machines, but sometimes it’s too much. They all have PTSD to some degree. Thor’s usually been the one to be with her when it happens, brings her back the fastest. 

Sif smiles. She looks tired and pale. “Yes, you are.” She squeezes the hand that is still holding hers. “And I did not mind.”

“Is everyone else okay? Who made else made it out?” 

Sif is silent for a beat too long. She looks away from Jane and jaw twitches. Jane feels choked. “Sif? What’s happened? Who--”

Pushing herself up, Sif moves from where she’s been sitting with Jane by the crumbling walls. Their hands untangle and there’s a new coldness in Sif’s stance that worries Jane the most. The last time she saw this they had decided to not to wait another week for Loki. 

She looks down at Jane, hitching her gun up on her shoulder. 

“There’s something you need to see, Jane.”

Jane scrambles up to her feet, pulls the jacket tight around her, and follows Sif as she leads Jane down a maze of tunnels. Half way to wherever they’re going Jane realises what jacket she’s wearing. It’s an old one of Thor’s. They don’t have that many clothes anymore, but Thor had an extra jacket that that had a missing sleeve. They had fixed it up for Loki when he came back. 

But Loki isn’t wearing anymore. She is. Jane feels so cold all of a sudden.

“Sif, where’s Lo--”

Sif opens a door. 

“This way.”

Jane follows. 

Inside she sees Tony and Bruce, both alive, for the most part it seems. Relief floods her. Under his open shirt she can see someone has wrapped Tony’s upper body in bandages. He seems to be leaning most of his weight on Pepper and Steve. They're crowded around something. They all look at her as she comes in. 

Jane wants to smile, happy they’re alive, but finds she can’t. 

They don’t smile at her either. 

“What’s happened?” she asks, afraid of the answer. 

Steve beckons her closers and Jane shares a look with Sif, who nods and comes up to Jane’s side. She touches her shoulder and together they step forward. 

Everyone parts and Jane finally sees what they’re looking at with such grim faces. 

Loki's strapped to the table. Not even a bed, she realises right away. Because this is not a makeshift hospital room. This is a-- 

The table is metal and when she comes into his line of sight Loki smiles. His teeth are sharp and white, the edge of his smile is as dangerous as ever. She’s always thought of him as oddly handsome the same way she’s alway thought of Sif as impossibly beautiful. Striking, they both are. Sharp, as well. 

But this smile, this sharpness, leaves her cold. 

“Hello, Jane, maybe you can talk some sense into everyone,” he says, cool, calm as always. _No. Oh god, no_ , she thinks, and feels bile crawl up her throat. She can't help it and turns her head to throw up. She misses Sif's boots by inches. 

She's surprised at herself. She's not one to throw up. Maybe it’s just the last bit of shock leaving her, or it's some new shock settling in, but, she fears, it's Loki. Loki and the metal ribs and wiring she can see gleaming under skin.

Wiping her mouth, she stands back up and catches Sif’s eyes. She understands the look from before now. Sif looks away. She doesn’t look at Loki. Jane can’t blame her.

She hears Steve is asking her if she’s okay, but he might as well be white noise to her right now. In that second she's glad that Thor is gone, because this would have broken him. She can only imagine his pain and rage and she's glad she's spared him it. 

But also, she’s now sure he made it. He’s had to, because she can’t wish him a world where is brother has become the very thing they’re fighting against.

-

Besides having forgotten how annoying traffic is, what Thor notices as he rides towards Pasadena is how blue the sky is. The sky in the future had dulled into a pale grey. 

The wind pushes against him as he rides and he thinks about Jane. Jane loved the sky. Told him his eyes reminded her of it, of how it used to be, before the bombs bleached it out. She used to tell him he reminded her of sunny days, blue skies, yellow sun. Used to scrunch up her noses when she mumbled she might as well reminded him of dirt all brown, brown, brown. Thor always told her that if she was earth he’d happily roll around in her forever and nuzzled her neck. It always made her laugh. 

The sun is out today. 

The sky is blue. 

Earth kicks up under the bike’s wheels as he skids too close to a patch of grass as he stops. He's not proud of having stole it, but somethings can't be help.

He looks at his watch, also stolen. It’s two in the afternoon. 

Jane used to tell him about her days on campus. She’d been thirty-two and working on some thesis in New Mexico when the bombs fell. He’d been on leave, hanging out with friends and Loki in bar back East. He’d been twenty five. They met month later. They spent years together. He’s almost thirty-three now. 

Jane is twenty five in present time. They’ve switched places. 

She used to tell him she would like to get coffee in the afternoon from a little cart by the fountain near the Baxter building. He folds up his campus map.

He spots her with relative ease. 

She’s so much younger. Her hair is longer, lighter, from spending time out in the sun, he guesses. She dresses mostly the same, however. Comfortable clothes, shoes she can spends hours on her feet. Shoes she can run in. Her eyes are so much brighter. He can’t help but stare. 

She must feel that someone is watching her because she looks away from the friend she was speaking to, her eyes searching. He knows he should drift back, she looks bright and young and happy, but her warning rings in his ears. _They’ll come for us first._

Jane in the future knows the world in a way that the Jane of now wouldn’t be unable to understand. She couldn’t begin to understand what her hands have built and destroyed. Thor hates that one day she’ll lose some of that brightness that surrounds her. She was always so wrong when she compared herself to dirt, she has always been blinding to him. 

She catches his stare and blinks. She looks away, cheeks pinker than they were before, and then looks back, confused. He can’t felt but feel some pride, that he can still make her flush even now when he is a stranger. He doesn’t look away her and makes a choice. 

Stepping forward, in in his heart he apologises to her. He's about to shatter the picture of the world she has, but her survival is more important to him than anything else. He only hopes she is as open minded as before. He came with no proof but his words.

“Jane Foster?” he says, making sure to turn his words into a question.

“Yes? Can I help you?” She pinks up further. She once told him that she never had much luck in the romance department before him. He smiles at her, hates himself for what he’s about to do. 

“I need to speak to you about--”

He's cut off as bullets start flying around them, and a man -- tall, broad, muscled, and armed with a shotgun -- stalks towards them. Thor shoves Jane behind him even as she screams. 

Jane, as always, had been right. 

They did come after her first. It doesn’t surprise him. That they appeared with his arrival does, but there’s no time to dwell on that. Hers, Tony and Bruce's plan has worked, he’s the proof of it. And now he knows his mission: he’s going to make sure they don’t win this time. 

Knocking the cart over, he pushes Jane behind it as he pulls a gun out (also stolen) and shoots at the T-888 coming at him. The flesh coating can’t hid the stiff movements of the machine. Especially not to Thor, not anymore. 

He ducks back down and look at Jane. Her eyes are wide and unfocused with fear. He hates he’s done this.

“Jane! Jane! Look at me!”

She blinks and stares at him. “What the hell is going on?” she yells. “Who the hell are you!”

He smiles. She always comes back stronger after she pushes her fear back. 

He offers her his hand. “Come with me if you want to live.”

“What the fu--” 

A shot cuts her off and he pulls her up and behind him, pushing her towards his bike. They duck down between a row of cars for a second for him to reload. 

The T-888 gets closer narrows it’s eyes on them and in a mechanical tone says her name. Thor feels Jane start behind him. He aims and lands a shot in the machine’s eye. Then he aims for the cars. You learn a lot of things in war and one of them is how to explode a row of cas with five shots. 

It buys them ten seconds. It’s enough. He pushes Jane on the bike and speeds away. 

He feels Jane’s fingers clutch at his side. He can tell they’re trembling. He can’t stop now though. They need to get far away. 

Then he’ll apologise to her for ruining her life.

**Author's Note:**

> Right so last year Fuzz kinda wrote “for me” this Thor/Jane this wedding fic, and I say “for me” bc it her gifting it to me was just her being an awesome friend. Then this year for my birthday she gifted me a prequel to that about this headcanon we came up with. Why am I telling you this? Bc last year for Fuzz’s birthday I finished this Thor Terminator AU thing I emailed her once about, and since this year she was wonderful enough to gift me another part of a story of something I really love I thought I would do the same.


End file.
